By Paul Nyathi|MDC-T President Nelson Chamisa who is also the presidential candidate for the MDC Alliance coalition has been implicated in a social media nap showing him parading a handicapped known ZANU PF activist claiming he was maimed in the 2008 election violence by ZANU PF members.
The picture of Chamisa parading one Taurai Leonard Gwesu with an amputated right arm at an MDC Alliance rally over the weekend captioning that the man was a victim of ZANU PF brutality in 2008 made huge social media rounds after the rally only for information to emerge that the detail was incorrect.
National Patriotic Front Spokesperson Jealous Mawarire was the first to dispute the claims indicating that he personally knew Gwesu in the late nineties at the University of Zimbabwe already with the same disability and could not have been amputated in the 2008 election violence.
MDC-T supporters initiated the social media controversy on the picture showing Chamisa with the disabled man claiming that he had presented himself to the opposition party leader to exhibit the ruling party brutality.
“This young man lost his hand to the Junta PF 2008 political violence. The same people who are now leaders of the current government are promising you free and fair elections and you expect me to vote for them,” read the caption.
Mawarire responded to dispel the information indicating that Gwesu has always had the handicapp.
“While the Junta did some unpardonable stuff in 2008, the guy in the picture is Taurai Gwesu, former Student leader at UZ and Gwesu had the same disability in 1997 when he was studying BA at UZ,” said Mawarire.
However, party youth activist Makomborero Haruzivishe disputed claims that Chamisa paraded Gwesu as a victim of ZANU PF violence but that he introduced him as having defected from ZANU PF to join the MDC-T.
“President Chamisa introduced him at the rally as his former college cadre who later sold out and joined Border Gezi militia. He was presented at the rally as someone who had repented and rejoined the democratic forces. No mention of his disability was made,” he said in a Twitter response.
Efforts to get a comment from the information office in the MDC-T were not successful at the time of writing.